GOD VERSUS THE IDEA OF GOD

By Thomas Richard Harry

GOD VERSUS THE IDEA OF GOD sets forth a premise into the understanding of the idea of a higher power and a must-read for the would-be believers of the information age.

Posted by
IR Staff

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December 22, 2017

“Is there a God?” Thomas Richard Harry reluctantly poses this rhetorical question in his book GOD VERSUS THE IDEA OF GOD, followed by an inquisitive follow-up: “What else might there be?”

A loaded question indeed, but one Harry, a Protestant, was willing to tackle fervently with unwavering curiosity as the driving force and his logic the steering wheel to help point him in the direction to grasp the mystery that has plagued humankind for centuries. Using his 35 years of religious lay experience he mustered up his list of boundless questions exploring and challenging the Christian Bible’s credibility, God, and its idea.

Did man create the idea of God? Gleaning insights from the Pew Research Center and other Christian periodicals, the number of people who identify as Christians per Harry’s findings is on the decline and with it the piety of such believers. The Bible insists man abide by what Harry loosely describes rigid teachings, but the church refuses to adapt to society’s rapid-changing information age and modern day social and political liberalization.

“We are all non-corroborated agnostics, no matter what we might believe or the degree of confidence (faith) we have in that belief we start here from that position,” he muses. “We don’t know.” How? Science, for one. God’s creation of the Earth in six days is dubious if the planet is most likely millions of years older than it is, Harry explains. Albert Einstein’s brilliance holds some truth: “Religion without science is blind.”

And what of humans and original sin? If scripture purports that we’re made in God’s image, how could we be bad? If fallen angels, descended from heaven, this co-called utopia that we’re promised in everlasting life can’t by those standards achieve that perfection after all. Where does such a heavenly place exist amid the galaxy? Given man’s expansion of knowledge dating back to the Age of Enlightenment and today’s scientific progression in understanding the causation of diseases and deciphering the sex of unborn babies, why isn’t the church keeping up with society and instead keeping with antiquated history?

All this and more constitute Harry’s “unshakeable skepticism” of the Word of God, which, while “historically verifiable,” is it valid? Jesus, who Christians believe the Son of God, may have had a simple answer: “Blessed are those not having seen, yet having believed.” To Harry, there’s more than meets the eye.